


Un Jeu d'Honneur

by arysteia



Category: Beau Geste
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arysteia/pseuds/arysteia





	Un Jeu d'Honneur

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blackbird Song (Blackbird_Song)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackbird_Song/gifts).



My one great ambition as a boy was to become a knight, a Galahad or Percival for the modern age. My most prized possession was a copy of Malory that had belonged to my father, the inscription on the flyleaf _“George Geste, 1st in Latin, Slough Preparatory School, 1876”_ , and I was often to be found curled up with it in the schoolroom or under a tree in the garden. It was a beautiful volume, bound in calf skin and lavishly illustrated with colour plates from the pre-Raphaelites, _parfait gentil_ knights in burnished armour, and their beautiful ladies in silks of every colour, _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_ , and Elaine of Astolat, and Yseult of Ireland.

At some point it occurred to me that I should probably have to settle for Gawain rather than Lancelot, so that my two brothers could be Gaheris and Gareth, and while initially this seemed somewhat of a comedown, on further reflection I realised that to be “the Maidens’ Knight”, and a protector of women and defender of the poor, was no mean thing.

It was a huge disappointment, then, to realise, around the time I prepared to leave my prep school for Eton, that the best I might reasonably hope for was to find a position in the civil service, perhaps be posted to the newly pacified Transvaal now that the Boer rebellion had been put down, and participate in the building of the new Union of South Africa. The legacy my parents had left would fund an Oxford education, but I could not expect to impose on Aunt Patricia forever, and while as eldest son the bulk of the family fortune, such as it was, would be mine, it would still be incumbent upon me to take care of my brothers, and to see them settled and provided for.

We were fortunate, indeed, the three of us, to have been so long, and so well, nurtured by my aunt, a byword for charity and compassion, guardian not only to my brothers and myself, but to another three cousins of varied provenance, and mistress of a sprawling estate, all without any assistance, beyond the meagerest allowance, from her absent husband.

Patricia Rivers, my mother’s older sister, was a beautiful woman, with chestnut hair and flashing eyes. I imagine that, had she lived, my own mother would have looked much like her. She was the great belle of her debutante year, a vision in white silk satin, her dance card always full, and in one incident that lived on in infamy, two serious suitors came to blows at a subscription ball in favour of the Indigent Orphans Fund.  
It must truly have been a sight to behold, a student of theology engaging in fisticuffs with a very junior member of His Majesty’s Civil Service beside the buffet, and certainly the servants loved to speak of it even years later, in hushed tones to be sure, breaking off suddenly whenever I entered the room. Grossly inappropriate by the strict standards of British rectitude, it was nonetheless a romantic gesture in keeping with the best traditions of chivalry, and one that I wholeheartedly approved of, for how could man die better, or take a bloody nose at any rate, than for the favour of his lady? It was all for naught, however, as she rejected them both in the end.

Upon being thwarted, the one was ultimately ordained, and the other managed to console himself with serving the King’s interests in Central Africa. There remained a simmering dislike between them thenceforth, which could not be reconciled even when she stamped on the pieces of their broken hearts by marrying a third man entirely. Why she chose Sir Hector Brandon I will never know. It is certainly not mine to reason why, but it is a mystery for the ages. Uncharitable tongues attributed this sudden decision to his proffering of the fabled Blue Water, a magnificent sapphire his great-grandfather, “Wicked Brandon”, had “acquired” – _kindly word_ – when soldiering against Dupleix in India. 

Indeed it was said, and in her hearing I have no doubt, for wagging tongues can be cruel, and those of erstwhile rivals the cruellest, that _“Sir Hector Brandon bought Patricia Rivers with the Blue Water and now owns the pair.”_ I never believed a word of it, for apart from being a generous benefactress, Aunt Patricia was always independent and strong-willed, having gone to the continent alone for almost a year, over the protestations of her parents and without even a companion, before returning to her wedding. 

Whatever it is she saw in him, and for all that I never saw much evidence of it myself, see it she must have done. I often felt, as a youth, that I should quite like one of these notorious gossips to mention the matter in front of me at a ball or salon, that I too might duel for the sake of her honour, but of course people will not calumniate so freely in front of a man as they will a boy. 

My own mother, Helen, altogether a gentler spirit, married the aforementioned George Geste, and if progeny may be the proof of contentment in the marital estate, then their marriage was certainly the happier of the two, for my twin Digby and I were born within the year, and our younger brother John less than two years after that, whereas Aunt Patricia had none, nor like to have any once Uncle Hector began spending the bulk of his time on the sub-continent. 

Poor Aunt Patricia! As children, we did not, of course, realise just how badly Uncle Hector actually treated her. As we grew older, however, it was impossible to avoid knowing how universally he was hated, and how shamefully and shamelessly he squandered his fortune, thinking nothing of his dependants, be they family or tenants, that he might enjoy himself abroad. The one alleviation of her marital woes was their intermittence, for Uncle Hector was generally anywhere but at home, much preferring the farthest flung reaches of the Empire, where he could hunt and debauch without any let or hindrance.

Sadly, my own parents’ happiness was to be short lived, for George, a clerk in the Imperial British East Africa Company, came down with black water fever, and Helen, who nursed him through the whole illness, wound up taking malaria herself and dying shortly after. We were unceremoniously packed off back to England, three small boys and a pile of steamer trunks significantly larger than us, and thence to Brandon Abbas, where Aunt Patricia very generously took us in.

Digby and I remembered just enough of Kenya to miss it, but John remembered nothing at all, nor our parents either, and recalling my father’s last words to me, which were that I must be very brave, very kind, at all times a gentleman, and consider it always my duty to defend those weaker than myself, I resolved to do my part to bring him up a decent young man rather than a bounder like Uncle Hector. This sentiment was only heightened when I met our cousin Augustus Brandon, an oily tick of the worst sort. 

Augustus was Uncle Hector’s nephew, which a gentleman would not have held against him, but I am afraid he lived down to his relative’s reputation, and made altogether too much of his own position as heir presumptive to the estate. I could have tolerated this for myself, but it was the grossest impertinence and ingratitude towards the lady of the house, given that it was, in fact, my aunt and not his uncle who had brought the little beast up. Known thenceforth to all, or at least to our band, as Ghastly Gustus, he was a model to me of what I did not want young Johnny to become.

Doomed to the moniker Very Small Geste at both Slough and Eton, my youngest brother was a loyal and steadfast follower. If anything, he obeyed me a little too blindly, a veritable Myrmidon, jumping to my every whim, and accepting and absorbing every insult and every slight as though it were nothing more than his due. Where Digby was a partner, my devoted second in command, John in those early days was very much our servant and minion. 

Digby and I used to call him Feeble Geste, which was a fairly unforgiveable pun as well as an unfair slur, and he bore it in a manner which seemed to show distinct lack of spirit, at least until the day I shot him in the leg with a cannon during a re-enactment of the battle of Trafalgar, and he won for himself for all time the sobriquet Stout Fella. I’m not sure I could have done much better, to be honest, being held down on a gravel path by two great lumps of boys and a couple of shrieking girls going to pieces, while my Captain pried a steel ball out of my calf with a penknife. It was then I realised I had nothing to worry about.

Digby was easier, just a quarter of an hour my junior, and much more like me in interests and abilities, though, the voice of justice must confess, with a better sense of humour and an easier disposition. I secretly envied him his ability to lighten any mood with a joke or a jape, and also for the ease with which he displayed his affections, for if there was one thing that I found difficult, it was admitting in simple words how I felt about people. Of Digby, at least, I had no doubts, since he knew my mind as well as I knew his, that sympathetic magic that twins have working in our favour.

It was a year or two after the destruction of the French fleet, and John’s dearly earned Viking funeral – and what a magnificent spectacle that was; if only such might still be had in this age of artillery and mundanity, surely any man of spirit would choose it over the cold earth and the way of all flesh – that the final piece in the picture puzzle of our lives fell into place. 

There came, one summer, to Brandon Abbas, two visitors, friends of Aunt Patricia. Well, one was her friend, and the other _his_ friend, but such a magnificent dinner companion that it was little wonder he should be invited also. He was truly a welcome antidote to the dour, forbidding visage of his comrade, and I was impertinent enough to ask how they came to know each other, this taciturn Englishman and a Frenchman so loquacious and charming. 

It transpired, of course, that they had been in the same House at Eton, and de Beaujolais, for such was the magnificent fellow’s name, had in fact been Lawrence’s fag. Truly, this world we inhabit is so small, though the British Empire spans a full quarter of it.

Lawrence spent the entirety of his leave at Aunt Patricia’s side, making love to her with his eyes, even as his steel grey moustache bristled and the Chaplain, that mild mannered soul, took to his bed, and I did not need Claudia and Isobel’s whispered confirmations to realise that these two must, in fact, be the admirers of her girlhood. I cannot fault them for remaining steadfast to the end, she was as magnificent at forty as she must have been at twenty.

In any case, de Beaujolais, member as he was of that great race of lovers, quit the house and joined us young people in the bower, where he displayed the patience of a saint, and a gift for story telling that would have done Scheherazade proud, in answering our every question about his life in Africa, down to the smallest detail.

He was a Major in the Spahi cavalry, stationed in the _Territoire Militaire_ of the Sahara, and while his tales displayed an understandable partiality for that great regiment, he spoke just as proudly of the _Chasseurs d'Afrique_ , the Zouaves, the Turcos, even the _Légion Étrangère_ , that peculiar body comprised of foreigners who had given up their nationality along with their identity, in order to become servants of _Madame la République_.

For pay of a single _sou_ a day – a sum that made the King’s shilling look a veritable bounty by comparison – a fellow from anywhere in the world might hope, on completion of five years’ service, to become a naturalised French citizen. If, that is, he should survive the sun, the Sergeants-Major, the Algerian wine, the Touareg, and the marvellously named _cafard_ , that madness that sets in after too long staring at the heat haze and the endless desert sands.

He told us too of desert warfare, of hand-to-hand combats wherein swordsman met swordsman on horseback as in days of old, of brave deeds, of veiled women, of secret Moorish cities, oases, mirages, sand-storms, and all the wonders of Africa. Even the _Bat d'Af_ , the penal battalion where defaulters and deserters were condemned to complete their enlistment, a place so grim its inhabitants were known, with typical French insouciance, as the _Joyeux_ , the joyful ones, sounded wonderful in his account. And then he showed us his skill with a sabre, which he had of course brought with him, and we were truly his. If I could have signed up on the spot I would have. Digby and John were in agreement, and even Ghastly Gussie looked tempted.

And therein lies the rub. As I sit here, pen in hand, attempting to order my thoughts and _explain myself_ , I wonder just how much I have inculcated my own foolish notions in my brothers. I am fearful, in the dark one candle does so little to dispel, of how swift they are to follow me, whether out of affection, or because they truly believe in me so strongly that they cannot fathom my making a mistake, or, even more shocking, deliberately doing wrong. I love them dearly for it, and at the same time regret bitterly how badly I may have led them astray. 

They know me so well; could they possibly divine my intent? The hands on the mantel clock tick ominously towards what I must do, and I can only pray they will this once do the sensible rather than the right – _damn it, what do I even know of the right?_ – thing.

The simple fact is, there is only one thing I _can_ do. I have made my decision, and I am assured that it is consistent with everything I have ever read or thought or been told of honour, and certainly if I had only myself to think of I would not hesitate. It is only the thought of those two boys, my brothers, and John in particular, John who was so very angry and disappointed with me when I met him on the stairs just now, that holds me. 

Not that I blame him for assuming the worst; what choice did I give him? And it was what I wanted, after all, that the eye of suspicion should turn my way instead of towards one who should be above reproach. And if, in fact, her hems have dragged a little through the mud, I find I do not love her any less for it. I only wish she had trusted me enough to allow me to act for her while there was still time. 

Then again, I have now the opportunity I should never have had otherwise to do Aunt Patricia a service as well - a thing I have devoutly wished for since that day I stood in her hall, encased in the suit of armour I would have wished to wear in earnest, and overheard something I was never meant to know - and thereby to repay, in some small measure, her great goodness to me and my brothers.

Yes, were it not for John, and the terrible spectre of my having disgraced myself in his eyes – I am sure Digby will divine the truth, if he gives it even a moment’s thought – I should feel absolutely happy in my decision. That, and the fact that the house is so very quiet, and I find, at the last, that I do not want to go. 

No. I don’t want either of my brothers ever to think I had even a moment’s doubt. I shall cast this nonsense into the fire, and tomorrow, after breakfast – who wouldn’t be less fanciful after kedgeree and porridge and a good cup of coffee? – I shall write a letter more in keeping with what Digby would expect of Beau Geste. He will know how to explain this whole mess to John. And if, no, _when_ , we meet again, I shall have tales of high adventure that will so thrill him he will forget all about this one I cannot share.


End file.
